The Vatican city is under threat from science, and held to ransom by people who wish to consume it through light (and explosions, and murder). Only one man, and a few side-characters, can prevent this cataclysmic event from happening! His name is Robert Langdon.
This week we dug out a modern classic from the vaults in order to take a look at the science of Angels & Demons. The film, adapted from the book of the same name by Dan Brown, is a whirlwind story and an answer to the question: what happens when somebody steals some fancy science things and threatens to explode the Pope-land?
Who is more ignorant — the man who cannot define lightning, or the one who does not respect its awesome natural power?
While an exciting watch, full of red robes and pretty buildings, it fell short of great in a few important areas. On the face of it, the science looks okay, but is it really?
The Good
1. Antimatter in CERN: During the film, a 1/4 of a gram of antimatter is stolen from a secret room in CERN. Enough to devestate the Vaticant City! While this seems like a bold claim, using statistics plucked from the air, antimatter is a real thing. Indeed, 1/4 gram of it would be as explosive as 5,000 tonnes of dynamite, according to Boris Kayser. Therorized to exist in 1928, antimatter was first produced at CERN in 1995. The science looks good.
The Not So Good (Not At All)
1. Also, the antimatter: Unlike in the film — in which the brains at CERN produced a whole 1/4 gram of antimatter — a tiny amount of the substance exists in reality. FermiLab in Chicago, one of the world’s best antimatter creators, manages to make only two nanograms of the stuff a year, meaning it would take it would take around 100 billion years to produce only one gram of the material. So, while antimatter is certainly capable of devastating cities it’s going to be a while before it hits the shelves as a commercial city-leveler.
2. Transportation: While some antimatter can be trapped in electromagnetic devices, tranporting it in such a handy dandy way is a giant leap into the future. It’s very unlikely any container of antimatter would be thief-friendly unless you happened to be in possession of a heavy goods vehicle and a whole lot of ingenuity.
3. The top secret research: In reality, very little (if anything) in CERN is kept secret. Science makes great strides through not being secret, through collaborations and papers. It’d be very difficult for CERN to inform areas such as web development, physics, and medicine, of anything if they weren’t allowed to speak without self-destructing themselves (or something similar).
Overall:
We loved the european accents, the way Robert Langdon knew everything, and the pristene lab coats (not sure we’ve ever seen lab coats so devoid of stains!) but the film fell down in a few key areas. Was an airlock necessary to run the LHC? Probably. Would they have been wearing lab coats at all? Nope. What point is there when you’re dealing with tiny particles that are invisible? Other than for catching biscuit crumbs, obviously.
Admittedly, the whole stealing-antimatter-and-threatening-to-detonate-it would have been slightly less exciting with the amount of antimatter currently stored at CERN but it would have been nice to see a little less “I AM A SCIENTIST AND SO I WEAR A SERIOUS FACE AND WHITE COAT” and a little more of the Pope things. That is all we are saying.
TEPE Magazine 